EXTENDING ONLINE AND BLENDED LEARNING TO CORPORATIONS IN THE NEW YORK METROPOLITAN REGION
Robert Ubell
Dean, School of Professional Education
Stevens Institute of Technology
I. INTRODUCTION
WebCampus.Stevens, the online graduate education and corporate training
unit of Stevens Institute of Technology, delivers one of the largest and
most effective ALN and blended programs of any college or university in
the New York metropolitan region. Under a newly awarded Sloan Foundation
grant [1], the school is extending its engineering and management programs
to area corporations, supporting local telecommunications, pharmaceutical/life
sciences, media, finance and other key industries. Stevens provides local
employees of Fortune 500 and other companies access to high-quality online
advanced technical and managerial skills, preparing them for success in
global competition.
Established in 1870, Stevens offers baccalaureate, masters and doctoral
degrees in engineering, science, computer science, management and technology
management, as well as a baccalaureate in the humanities and liberal arts,
and in business and technology. The university enrolls about 1,800 undergraduates
and 2,600 graduate students. It is one of the oldest and most respected
engineering and management schools in the nation with a long tradition of
meeting the technical and managerial needs of local industry.
Table 1. Data Compiled from the Schools' Websites. Comprehensive Universities in the Region, Such as Columbia, CUNY, Rutgers, and Pace are Not Included.
When compared with the four other regional engineering schools—New Jersey
Institute of Technology, Polytechnic University, Drexel University, and
Cooper Union—Stevens' online learning effort is by far the most robust (see
chart above). The school offers more online masters degrees and graduate
certificates than all four combined. It is also the only regional engineering
school with an online MBA [2].
II. LOCAL ENROLLMENT
The table for fiscal year 2004–05 that follows compares the number of graduate
enrollments by geographic regions throughout the US. The data confirm the
strength of WebCampus' local penetration. Approximately 84% of graduate
enrollments are from New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.
As the table below shows, while Stevens has an excellent record of attracting
students at a distance (with enrollments over the five-year period from
44 US states and 42 countries abroad), the number of students drawn from
the local region only is significant. The next two maps confirm this local
impact.
Table 2. Local vs. Distant WebCampus Enrollments (Calendar Year 2006).
Excludes undergraduates enrolled in graduate online courses.
Map 1: Distribution of Local vs. National Enrollment
Pushpin images represent locations of WebCampus students.
Map 2: Local Enrollment D
Pushpin Images Represent Locations of Webcampus Students.
Blue Line Indicates Outer Circumference of Convenient Commuting Distance From Stevens' Hoboken, NJ Campus.
Winner of the 2003 Sloan-C award for Institution-wide Teaching and Learning
Programs, WebCampus has also been awarded the 2005 US Distance Learning
Association's "21st Century Best Practices" prize as the best online graduate
school. The school began offering online graduate courses in 2000 with full
accreditation granted by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education
two years afterwards.
Today, WebCampus offers a dozen masters degrees (including an MBA in Technology
Management) and more than 30 graduate certificate programs in science, technology
and technical management. Teaming and collaborative learning are among the
key pedagogical requirements of WebCampus online instruction [3]. These
elements parallel the needs of global corporations for technical and managerial
personnel to perform effectively in highly competitive environments [4].
III. ASYNCHRONOUS DELIVERY
WebCampus employs WebCT as its online course management system, consistently
upgrading it for easier navigation. Online students have convenient access
to every university service available on campus-online application, registration,
advising, access to faculty, bookstore, library access, e-mail, and technical
support.
Graduate programs fall under the university's three schools—Sciences and
Arts (ISSA), Technology Management (STM), and Engineering (SOE). Combined,
the three schools offer 708 graduate courses, 308 of which (or 43.5%)
have been migrated to online and blended delivery (see chart below). The
school plans eventually to deliver all its graduate courses on campus and
online, a target that no other local or even national school has yet accomplished.
Table 3. Migration of Stevens Graduate Courses to Online Delivery
IV. SYNCHRONOUS DELIVERY
In 2005, WebCampus introduced synchronous technology to enhance student
learning and to permit the introduction of more blended courses. Using Interwise,
a voice-over-IP web-conferencing system, instructors conduct real-time and
recorded lectures. Interwise enables students to deliver online presentations
to others in their virtual class and engage in online team projects. About
15% of WebCampus online courses now offer Interwise as an option.
The school plans to expand its use to all WebCampus courses in the next
few years.
Synchronous learning tools enhance online delivery, particularly for local
students. Those far from campus, especially in different time zones, are
less likely to engage in live synchronous sessions. Interwise opens additional
blending options, giving instructors alternative delivery methods, including
ALN, conventional classroom instruction, and now online synchronous education.
V. BLENDED LEARNING
Stevens' System Design and Operational Effectiveness (SDOE) program offers
blended delivery consisting of two- to three-day, face-to-face sessions
extended over a number of weeks online. Launched three years ago, it is
the most robust and fastest-growing of Stevens' hybrid programs. SDOE delivers
courses to a number of local institutions, including the Federal Aeronautics
Administration (FAA), IBM, ITT, Lockheed-Martin, and Northrop Grumman, among
others. SDOE partners with about a dozen corporations and government agencies,
delivering 20 traditional face-to-face courses with 12 taught online. A
parallel blended program in project management began in the spring of 2006
at FAA in Atlantic City.
The school encourages local students to earn their graduate degrees in
hybrid mode [5]. Taking some of their courses online and others on campus,
students who live within commuting distance can earn their degrees more
rapidly by traveling to campus for some of their courses while taking others
online from home or elsewhere. Stevens plans to offer blended learning options
for most graduate programs to permit wider acceptance at local corporations
seeking alternative, flexible education and training options.
VI. LOCAL CORPORATE STRATEGY
Stevens has a long and solid tradition of offering graduate programs directly
to local corporate and government clients. Stevens offered online education
to regional corporate clients immediately after WebCampus was launched.
Today, the school provides more than 50 industry and government organizations
with onsite, online and blended education. The school's most important regional
clients are Citigroup, Consolidated Edison Company of N.Y., Inc., Honeywell,
Johnson & Johnson, Lockheed-Martin, Picatinny Arsenal, and Verizon Communications.
The aim now is to play an even greater role in supporting these key regional
industries-pharmaceutical/life sciences, media and publishing, banking and
finance, telecommunications and cable, energy, and defense.
VII. ONLINE CORPORATE TRAINING
Under the School's newly introduced School of Professional Education, Stevens
has embarked on a regional effort to deliver corporate training to Fortune
500 and other companies. Working closely with company learning officers,
Stevens' faculty and staff modularize graduate courses, abbreviating and
customizing them for more efficient and effective training. Upon completing
certain courses, Stevens provides employees with CEU and PDU credits, especially
those in project management.
In mid-2006, Stevens completed an eight-week ALN course, incorporating
Interwise synchronous elements, to Consolidated Edison's senior management.
Following its successful implementation, the company agreed to offer it
to other ConEd personnel. Hybrid and online corporate training programs
are either in progress or in discussions with learning officers at local
divisions of FAA, Ethicon, IBM, and others. Stevens' SDOE program also provides
partially online corporate training regionally to IBM, US Army and Navy,
and Lockheed-Martin, among others.
The extension of the school's online and hybrid learning capabilities into
the corporate training marketplace is a natural outgrowth of Stevens' systematic
effort to collaborate with local industry, not only in research and education,
but in corporate training as well. These pilot programs in delivering ALN-style
training to company personnel are among the very first anywhere.
In order to accomplish its ambitious goals, Stevens' staff enters into
contractual arrangements with training officials, heads of functional groups,
or human-resources executives at local companies. Faculty and staff visit
local corporate executives to negotiate these and other options:
- Posting announcements of WebCampus online programs on corporate education
and training websites
- Providing tuition discounts for online and blended learning employees
- Establishing WebCampus as a "preferred educational provider"
- Sending e-mail alerts to employees about Stevens online and blended
programs
- Announcing WebCampus programs in corporate online and print newsletters
- Distributing Stevens marketing and adverting materials to employees
- Attending local corporate education fairs
- Arranging exclusive online and blended learning vendor agreements
- Customizing corporate training to meet company objectives
WebCampus has grown from merely 23 enrollments in its first semester
five years ago to more than 10,000 cumulative enrollments in the fall
of 2006. The chart below illustrates dramatic annual increases year to
year. For the last completed academic year (2004–2005), WebCampus total
online graduate enrollment reached 1,832, representing 14% of the
school's graduate enrollment, ahead of US higher education's national
average of 11% for online courses (as of fall 2002).
Table 4. Web Campus Enrollments
VIII. ONLINE AND BLENDED FACULTY
Of approximately 328 Stevens faculty, 105 teach WebCampus courses, representing
about 32% of the school's faculty. About two-thirds are full-time,
another third, part-time. The same faculty who teach on campus also teach
online with the same curriculum as in conventional classes. Oversight of
online curriculum is in the hands of the school's Graduate School Committee,
which is equally responsible for on-campus as well as online and blended
instruction. Nearly all WebCampus faculty who provide instruction return
afterwards to teach online again.
Given Stevens' accomplished record of providing local industry with a variety
of educational and training options-on campus, on-site, online, and blended
delivery-the school anticipates that tri-state area companies will join
Stevens in partnerships to offer their employees a full range of technical
and management programs to allow them to compete nationally and, perhaps
more importantly, globally.
IX. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Ubell is Dean of the School of Professional Education
at WebCampus Stevens Institute of Technology. He has held a number of positions
in publishing, e-commerce, and education. He was vice-president and editor-in-chief
of Plenum Publishing Corporation, editor of The New York Academy of Sciences
monthly, The Sciences, and American publisher of Nature. He was also founding
publisher of Nature Biotechnology. He has held senior posts as an Internet
executive-president of BioMedNet and executive vice president for new media
at Marcel Dekker. Ubell was head of his own consulting firm, Robert Ubell
Associates, representing such clients as Elsevier, Harcourt, Wiley, and
McGraw-Hill, among dozens of others, including various nonprofit groups,
such as the American Cancer Society and the American Institute of Physics.
Ubell has consulted for numerous corporations and nonprofit groups, including
the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, IBM,
Xerox, Lotus, and MIT, Cambridge, and Columbia University presses.
X. REFERENCES
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. New York Tri-State Area Corporate Online
Engineering and Management Grant. Awarded June 2006.
- Skaare, R. In Line with Online Success: The Stevens Institute of Technology/WebCampus
Stevens. Corporate University Xchange, 2006. http://www.corpu.com/news/writings/2006-stevens.asp.
- Volchok, E. Building Better Virtual Teams. eLearn Magazine 37(1): 2006. http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=case_studies&article=37-1.
- Ubell, R. Engineers Turn to eLearning. IEEE Spectrum, October 2000.
- In China, Stevens offers several graduate programs in hybrid form, with
a third of the courses delivered online, another third by Stevens' instructors
who travel to Beijing, and yet another third by Chinese faculty from local
partner schools. Available online at http://www.stevens.edu/gradadmissions/china.html
for further details. See also:
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